For the first time, scientists have created a synthetic cell, heralding a new era in biology. Shelly Banjo talks to Robert Lee Hotz about the huge implications of this development.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

good ... scientists have created the first synthetic Tsao I'm Shelly Banjo and the ... senior science writer ... Wall Street Journal We Tommy whoa what's happened here well this is the thresholds moment in history biology ... scientists helmets for the first time researchers have been able to ... create a synthetic living cell ... on four ... thirty five years research has been cutting and pasting small bits of ... Jean material ... to create plants in Annals but this is the first time we've been able to craft an entire organism ... during its entire set of genetic instructions and this gives us real power over life we've never had before take this into being a chemistry lab over here what are people actually get Heidi pancreas how ... well it actually ET with the Jewish state a computer code and in a very real way they're ... taking computer code and turning it into a one point ... they start out with the DNA sequence which is to stick those days and he's jeez ... that represent the Chemicals the life ... of a million characters ... it's the largest genetic instructions have to work with ... they were called out on a computer to rewrite it as it did to actually put a ... literary quotations into ... the James Joyce ... and then just this only stand out from an actual argument ... Dave and took a back to code ... mailed it to any of ... the nascent this icing company and now Washington state ... called Blue Heron who descended businesses emphasizing DNA ... they ran this up up on their synthesizers turn this code into the chemistry of DNA ... and gave it back to the researchers who then use the natural abilities and certain cells yeast and bacteria ... that can stitch this material together ... we like ... the Milliman making quilts unremarkable ... into the whole genome which four ... our current capacity in training injury in a man's meal on ... a string of being a ... very brutal stuff very fragile they tend to put it into a cell ... from which ... the ... other BN had been removed ... this time ... knew the name this new genome which call on the complete set of genetic instructions ... like a new operating system like a ... Vanua version of Windows or new version of ... snow Leopard ... took over the soul and transforms it into a new species to light and space to spare what will this mean for the scientific field ... this gives us like a fundamental ability ... to really Kraft organisms to serve medical industrial purposes this is something scientists have been talking about thirty five years ... and you know to a small degree we've been able to do mean you can get genetically engineered insulin things like that now ... now here you're talking about being able to stream of takeovers ... the entire metabolic pathways to sell to do things nice stress this is very hypothetical theoretical this point what ... does lie in the form of algae that can take the carbon out of the air ... and transform it ... to its digestive system ... come into a usable fuel ... Exxon right now has a six hundred million dollars contract with a company ... that funded these experiments to do just that it's very far off very hypothetical very least a half a dozen other firms ... working in his Chariot with the call synthetic biology to find duties as an asking price the high and then sending someone to make some money off of well priced and Craig Venter who was the ... chief scientist in charge of all this will ... stand to profit in some point ... he is ... the fellow who was responsible for the Private into enterprise effort to sequence the human ninety nine ... his company synthetic genomics ... put up about thirty million dollars to these experiments ... in return for which they kept the intellectual property rights and will have one and have to keep tabs on what happens it's been since they hardly have seen a science writer with the last return often and Shelly Banjo ... in New York with a loss to channel digital network ...